“But this guy,” he said, and his face grew tight, “he isn’t about love at all. He’s about hurt and depravity and degradation. Is he a pedophile straight up? I don’t know. Does he like to terrify and torture? I think so. Get him, Marie.” His glowed in a strange way, matching the tiny swatch of red fabric in Marie’s purse. She slipped her fingers and crumpled them around it.
“Get him.”
“I will,” she said, and they were united, she and this monster. They had one purpose.
She would find him, this murderer. She would bring down The Wolf. The Original Monster had showed her how.
CHAPTER EIGHT
To find The Wolf, one must think like a Wolf. Wolflet Marie looked in her mirror one dark night for the last time. She was saying goodbye.
Goodbye, dark hair. Goodbye, soft eyes. Goodbye, lips that quivered and trembled and did everything but speak and eat. Goodbye gentle, hard-working hands.
Her smoothly curled ears grew sharp and hard, pointed at the ends. Her nose elongated into a snout. Her teeth sharpened, her eyes darted and watched and threw back light in the darkest of the night. Fur ran across her mother’s skin, tufted at her collar. Her hands grew, stretched, and were tipped with claws. Wolflet Marie howled and shattered the mirror. She didn’t want to chance seeing weak Human Marie in there ever again.
She stayed up late doing batches of work. She smiled at the cashier when she picked up her few groceries. She donned her sunglasses and looked like any other woman when she traveled to and fro on the bus line. Deceptions. A wolf in human skin. She was on the prowl for a hunter.
But before finding the hunter, she had to find prey. This was harder.
Marie had never noticed that the city was alive with lithe, coltish, beautiful girls. Their teeth were white and strong, or bucked and adorned with braces. Their eyes were almond and round and narrowed and beautiful. Their mouths. Oh, their mouths. They sneered and trembled and wrapped themselves around cigarettes and Coke bottles and words words words.
The words floated like bubbles. Laughter with friends. Insults. Annoyance with parents. “Leave me alone” and “Wait for me!” and “I don’t like sushi but let’s get cheeseburgers.”
“Do you think he likes me?”
“If she finds out, she’ll kill me.”
“I hate my hair sooooo bad.”
“Whatever.”
Words were currency. Marie wanted to save each syllable, stuff them in her pocket like the precious things they were. They were tossed around here and there like spare change, but she felt the weight, the beauty of each one.
Aleta had been full of words once. Given out like pretzels, thrown into the sky like confetti. Each word said and resaid, tasted and then abandoned like cardboard boxes by the side of the road. What Marie wouldn’t do for them now! Prize each one. Squirrel them away to feast on later.
The Wolf. What did he think of words? Perhaps he didn’t think of them at all. He would focus on their gazelle-like legs. The muscles that bunched under their thin jackets as they hoisted backpacks and bags on their shoulders. Words were nothing. Meaningless.
No words, just meat.
Look for the meat. Bait the trap to catch The Wolf.
Over the course of weeks, she taught herself how to hunt. How to smile. How to be unassuming and even friendly. Because a little girl around Aleta’s age really wasn’t a little girl anymore. She had become far too wise too soon. She wouldn’t have anything to do with a frightening man near the bus stop. Marie knew this.
But a kind man? Possibly, although still unlikely. An old man? Perhaps, especially since she was off to see her grandmother. A sickly man? More likely still, especially if she had a thermos of soup on her. Perhaps if she gave this sickly man a thermos of healing homemade chicken noodle soup, she could call her mother from the hospital and ask Marie to bring more for Grandmother. There was more on the stove. Aleta could give up her bowl. This could be.
A sickly man. Or perhaps a woman. A woman with a child. So many possibilities.
Think like the hunted. Think like the hunter.
Hunt the hunter. Kill the Wolf. Save little girls. Do all of these things.
Huntsman Marie donned herself in the Wolf’s clothing and stalked her prey.
This girl was with friends. So no. This girl has a sour attitude and a cell phone firmly to her ear. No again.
This little girl walks with her head down. She seems to be alone. Something is broken about her, something missing. Something wisping out behind her, either pouring from her hair or being kicked up by her worn sandals, and shattering upon the filthy pavement.
Her soul. It was her soul.
This. This was the girl. This was the prey, the rabbit not yet in a snare, but soon. Soon enough.
She howled in her soul. It tasted like blood and revenge and broken little girls. Then she looked around.
Passengers in line for the bus. People looking for their bus card or counting their change. Staring in store windows or walking by far too fast. People talking or dreaming or scheming. Men on benches. Women with strollers. Couples running by, jogging in place while they waited for the light to change, trying to keep their heart rate up.
Marie feared she would never have a slow heart rate ever again.
All of these people, all of these lives, and nobody noticed the girl with the broken soul trailing behind her. Nobody except Marie.
And one tiny man standing underneath a thin tree growing in a weedy open spot near the bus stop.
Marie studied him through her dark glasses. She studied him studying the girl. His facial expression was one of disinterest, of casual waiting, of taking a breather on a nice every day type of morning.
But his eyes.
His eyes were intense. Focused. Watching the girl. Wanting the girl. His want was so palpable that Marie gasped, and that tiny sound made his eyes dart from the girl to her.
She covered the gasp with a cough, and then casually strolled up toward the bus. Behind the girl with the broken soul and shoes. She climbed the bus to wherever, and rode until the girl got off. She memorized the stop. Realized that The Wolf would really have followed the girl home, or at least as close as he could, but she wasn’t him. She was herself, Simply Marie, and she was tired, and a bit sickened, and she needed to go home after a very long day.
CHAPTER NINE
She saw The Wolf twice more, each time eyeing the victim that she herself had chosen.
She knew it was him. Deep down in that primal part of her guts, she knew. The way he breathed, the way his teeth flashed, it all pointed him out to her.
“Officer.”
She stood in the police station, feeling like a criminal herself. Her bag was thrown over one shoulder. In it, she had something very, very important.
“This is him,” she said, and pulled out the phone. She thumbed through until she saw his long face, his devilish eyes. “This is The Wolf.”
Will the Officer eyed the picture carefully, committing it to memory. He pushed a few buttons and things zinged and zipped and flew through the etherverse until The Wolf and the various features that made up his face were contained neatly in nice little criminal files.
“He didn’t see you take it?”
“No. I was careful. Do you recognize him?”
“I don’t. But that doesn’t mean anything.”
He slipped the phone into his desk. Marie fidgeted.
“Thank your wife for letting me use her phone, would you? That was good of her.”
He leaned closer to her, put his elbows on his desk.
“What do you expect from this, Marie?”
She was taken back.
“What do you mean?”
He sighed. “I mean that you have a picture of a guy you’re suspicious of. I don’t know him. It may not be anything. Are you prepared for that?”
She wasn’t.
“It’s him,” she said, and her mouth went dry and disgusting. “I can practically taste him on my baby’s
lips.” She thought of Aleta’s No More Man Taste mouthwash, and it made her stomach churn. What was the last thing her daughter had supped on? Soup? Handfuls of dirt and grit? The Wolf himself?
“I wish that was enough to go on, Marie.”
“Well, what do you need? A confession? Pictures of Aleta?”
Will was a young man. A good man. But as he leaned back in his chair and stretched, he sounded old and tired.
“That would be nice, of course. But it isn’t going to happen.”
“DNA? I saw all of those shows. What if you get his DNA?”
Her eyes, they were wild. She could feel it. Could feel that she was so close, so incredibly close to this monster. Letting him walk away? She couldn’t do it.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Will said, and his beautiful, sorrowful eyes were narrowed. “You can’t do this on your own. Say you go after this guy. Say you get a gun on the street and blow his brains out in front of the bus stop. Then what? What does it do?”
“It gets him off the street.”
“No, it puts you in jail. Forever.”
“It would be worth it.”
“No,” he said, and grasped her arm. “It wouldn’t. It would put one more good person away. Take one more piece of sunshine out of the world. We’re waging a war here, Marie. We’re running out of good guys. We don’t need one more good person to turn bad.”
“I’m not . . . good for anything,” she said, and her voice was low. “But this is something I can do. And The Wolf, he’s disgusting. He needs to disappear. The world needs this. It’s something I can contribute.”
Will nearly growled in frustration. “Why aren’t you listening? Why insist on being the martyr. It’s the coward’s way out.”
Marie started. “A coward?”
“Listen,” he said, his voice soft and smooth and assuring. “That isn’t what I meant to say. Of course you aren’t a coward. I was just trying-”
“I get up every day knowing that my daughter is dead.”
“Marie.”
She felt her face flush. Felt it burn. Wondered briefly if Aleta’s had burned when she experienced the things The Wolf had done. Pain and shame and hatred had a way of turning the world red.
“She was raped and raped and raped. Before The Wolf. You know that, right?”
“Marie, I’m so sorry. I was just-”
“And I didn’t know. Didn’t know that I not only wasn’t keeping my little girl safe like I had thought, but knowing I had brought the monster into her home. Into her bedroom.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you don’t know what sorry is. Sorry is realizing that instead of being a mommy, you were really an enabler. I should have seen the signs. Figured it out. Listened when my little girl cried at night. Wondered why her nightmares were so vivid.”
“Please calm down.”
“She hates the taste of men. Did you know that? Do you know how it feels to hear your precious little angel say that? ‘Mama. Men taste bad.’”
The Officer winced. Took it hard in the gut like it was a punch. And it felt good to Marie, to have that power, to know her words carried that much weight. Because it was important. Somebody needed to listen. Somebody needed to understand.
“He went to jail, but only after so much time passed. I’m sure you’re familiar with it, officer. His rights and his trial and making sure that we weren’t infringing on his needs. He can force a little girl to do terrible, terrible things, but we need to make sure that he’s spending his time in comfort. We need to exercise compassion. Why is it that the legal system ties our hands, sir?”
“I don’t know.”
She liked that. Liked that he said “I don’t know” instead of “We’re doing our best” or “Justice is blind” or any of the other things that people in his position usually parroted. She liked the way his mouth became a thin line, like they always say in books, because she knew he hated the bitter taste of the words he was saying, too. That he wore a badge and took care to shine it, but sometimes he wanted to throw it against the farthest corner of the room and yell. Scream and scream until the walls fell down around him, like a house unboxing himself, and then he could run into the night and exact his own revenge.
“You feel it, too,” she whispered, and for a moment the room became a jungle, became a forest, became a desert. It was a place where the only thing that mattered was that instinct to hunt, that need to feed, and she wanted to drop to all fours and race off after The Wolf.
“I’d tear his throat apart with my teeth,” she said and the jungle/forest/desert room shivered in with steam and hunger and that primal need to kill.
Then she blinked, and the officer was leaning back in his chair again. A plain man. An ordinary human with small canines and blunt molars meant for grinding arugula and kale.
She sighed. The sound of her disappointment nearly crushed her. She thought it looked as though it would crush him, as well.
“Marie.”
She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t see the uselessness she knew she’d find in his eyes.
“Yes, officer?”
He drummed his fingers on the desk. Beautiful fingers, the kind that should be playing the piano or wrapping itself around the neck of a guitar after work. She wondered if he played music at home. Perhaps his wife did, as well. He wondered if they lived the kind of life where they played and sang and did normal things after he was finished obsessing about dead children.
“Don’t give up.”
He stopped drumming. Her gaze pinned on his like a holiday brooch.
“Don’t give up,” he said again, and the gravity in his voice gave her something. Hope. Fire. Something. Whatever it was, it nourished her and fed the frenzy that was swarming in her head.
“You asked about DNA.”
His voice was telling her that he was speaking in layers. Words under words. Meanings twined in and out. This is important, his voice was telling her, although his actual words were benign.
“DNA. Yes.”
“We can’t take his DNA from him. He needs to willingly give it to us. We’ve already asked him, and he refused. Which is his right, by law.”
“I see.”
Her mind, it was spinning in circles. The police couldn’t take his DNA, but what if she could? Ran by and grabbed a handful of hair? No, that wouldn’t work. It would be stupid. She’d feel like she was supposed to stuff it into a voodoo doll. She had to think of something else.
She fantasized briefly about sawing off his arm and taking the entire thing to the police. She couldn’t, of course, but the thought of The Wolf shrieking and flailing filled her with a glee that felt somehow devilish.
“We couldn’t accept any sort of DNA that comes as result of a crime,” he said, and the voice that intimated other things clearly told her I know what you’re thinking.
“Of course not,” she answered demurely.
He shuffled some papers that didn’t need shuffling. Straightened something on his desk that seemed straight in the first place.
“I wish we had the force necessary to spare officers to watch him. In case he dropped some DNA on the ground, in a public place, where anybody could pick it up. A cigarette butt, perhaps. Maybe spit out some gum on the sidewalk. Toss a partially eaten hamburger in the garbage, for example.”
Grim Marie became Elated Marie. She felt her face light, glow, blood rushing to and fro in her cheeks. Her mouth did something strange and wonderful. It turned up. And up. And up.
“I’ll do it,” she said, and the verve in her voice, the joy, it nearly took her back. But it didn’t, and she couldn’t stop grinning, and part of her brain thought she was utterly mad.
You’re this thrilled to stalk a killer and scrape his spit off the ground?
Yes. Yes yes.
Yes.
“So a person collecting DNA would, of course, need a sterile place to put it. And gloves are a good idea. But more than anything, that person shouldn’t get caught. I know
you won’t forget who we’re dealing with.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’s one more thing.”
Again, the words were neutral. Friendly and professional. But the voice told her there was something more to it. Much more.
“Yes?”
“If this person collecting the DNA could happen to get, oh, say, an apple or something that could give a fairly accurate representation of this man’s dental imprint, that could be very helpful.”
The grin, still floating and unsure and wonderful, fell from Marie’s face.
“Dental imprint? You mean, you want to compare it to a bite mark?”
He didn’t answer, but of course he didn’t need to. His face said everything. His voice had already told her.
“There was a bite mark. You found a bite mark on Aleta?”
So few pieces of her daughter had shown up. And what had was in the worst of shape. How vile that what was left had been . . . had been desecrated so!
“It would be helpful. That’s all I said. And perhaps that was too much.”
Officer Will stood up. Marie followed suit, on autopilot, shaking his hand and heading for the door only because he gently instructed her to. Her body knew the correct procedures and formalities, but her brain had forgotten.
“Be well, Marie,” he said. “I really am doing my very best for you.”
“I know,” she said, and there was truth to it. Sincerity. He flashed a brief smile at her and then shut the office door between them.
CHAPTER TEN
She followed him. She paced. She watched. She waited.
He didn’t smoke a cigarette or take a drink of anything. He didn’t spit on the ground or put his hands on anything she could take in to the police. He just watched. Prowled. Sniffed the air and smelled, perhaps, the scent of a hunter.
Crazy Marie couldn’t take it anymore. She was ready to scream. Ready to rush him and take his fingerprints forcibly. His DNA. Force him to bite down on something hard enough to get an imprint. Match it to the wound that he had left on her daughter.
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